I COME FROM HERE. I KNOW MY CONTEXT. I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING – AN EXPLORING EXPERIENCE OF THE TERRITORY AS A LIFE CONTEXT WITH CHILDREN FROM 6 MUNICIPALITIES OF THE DOURO REGION

Abstract

Arts Education has shown to be extremely effective in contexts of social intervention, mainly because Education is, as Paulo Freire and Dewey defend, a powerful and transforming tool for learning what we are as individuals and for putting us in relationship with others and with everything around us. In turn, Art, through the development of the imagination and the improvement of the senses, also enhances cognition, starting the process by which the organism becomes aware of its environment. The intersection between Art and Education offers an ideal context to enhance the processes of social inclusion and the fight against poverty and discrimination.

The FazParte! project aimed to combat the social exclusion of children and young people from 6 to 18 years of age in the Douro sub-region, with a lack of educational opportunities and at risk of social exclusion. Through the implementation of artistic expression programs, creative projects and non-formal educational artistic practices, the program invested in the integral development of the participants, mobilizing, for this purpose, practices of the visual and performing arts, co-creative and collaborative.

Field work was carried out in 6 Municipalities of the Douro and involved around 80 children and young people with the deliberate intention of intervening in and for the territory.

The proposal I come from here. I know my context. I know where I am going challenged the investigation of the concept of territory as a context of life from a particular place/region, through a set of mediation actions and art training. The actions developed intended to provide participants with a set of resources and tools for exploring their individual and collective experiences, transforming them from artistic and plastic experiences that will be analyzed from the point of view of awareness of knowledge of personal and collective territory, from the experience of the place.